One detail I’ve been struggling with while developing Bok’s Banging Butterflies is where to put the items in the Creative Inventory. While playing other mods for inspiration, I saw many create a dedicated Creative Tab just for their content. A tidy, mod-branded spot that makes everything easier to find.
NeoForge
A branch of Forge that may soon replace it.
Butterflies in Mud Puddles
I recently learned about mud-puddling, a behaviour where butterflies and other insects will gather nutrients from puddles, soil, and decaying organic matter. I immediately thought, “That would make a great feature for Bok’s Banging Butterflies.” So I set out to implement it.
The Automation of Releases
Every time I make a new release of Bok’s Banging Butterflies, I have to manually upload it to multiple sites. While this doesn’t take too long to do, it is tedious and repetitive, especially now I’m updating the mod more frequently.
Better Butterfly Landings
One feature that’s bugged me (pun intended) for a while in Bok’s Banging Butterflies is how butterflies only ever land on the tops of blocks. In real life, butterflies and moths land wherever they please. They’ll land on walls or ceilings, completely ignoring gravity like tiny winged rebels.
Immutable Butterfly Scrolls
The butterfly mod is full of bugs, and not always the good kind. This week another bug was reported about Butterfly Scrolls changing after an update. This was a weird one to solve, and unfortunately the fix will only work for scrolls placed in future versions of the mod.
Fixing Lepidopterist Trades
Porting and maintaining multiple versions of a mod can be a lot of work. Sometimes things slip through the cracks. One of those things were the Lepidopterist’s trade offers. I didn’t notice until after release that the Lepidopterist wasn’t offering all the trades they were supposed to.
A Butterfly Spawn Category
One problem that’s been around since the mod’s inception is that butterfly spawns take away from other animal spawns. That means fewer cows, sheep, rabbits, and so on in any Minecraft game with Bok’s Banging Butterflies installed. And as more butterfly species were added, the problem only got worse.
Porting to 1.21.4: Stage 4
In my porting adventure, I was almost there. I could load the game and create a new world. That didn’t mean that I was ready to release, however. Next came the laborious task of testing (almost) every feature in the mod to ensure that they still work.
Porting to 1.21.4: Stage 3
I’ve been porting Bok’s Banging Butterflies to Minecraft 1.21.4. The code compiled – great! The game loaded to the title screen – even better! But I still wasn’t done. Because now, the real test began: could I create a new Minecraft world?
Porting to 1.21.4: Stage 2
Last week I talked about how I got the mod compiling for version 1.21.4. I was optimistic but, as most developers will know, this is only the first step. The next step in the process would be to get the game to actually run.